dressing up

Last weekend, I got dressed up in an outfit that included boots, a tunic, a cloak, and a big sword. No. This was not for Halloween. Truth be told, I'm not much of a Halloween person. Something about a holiday celebrating scary stuff has never really clicked with me. Probably something to do with how I was afraid of everything as a kid--spiders, skeletons, zombies, end-of-the-world, clowns, you name it. So, we don't really do much for Halloween most years.

However, I am not opposed to costumes. Quite the contrary. Right now, we're working on the cover image for a book, and this pic is one of the many images from our first shoot.

On the rocks

Obviously, this isn't really the greatest picture. Most of them didn't really turn out to be close to what I was hoping for. J. was busy snapping photos, and I was busy trying not topple over onto the rocks when he insisted I crouch dramatically beside the river and put my weight on my bad knee. Plus we have to re-arrange the cloak. Most of the pictures look like a blue-green plaid blob with a bit of sword showing.

This is the result of being a writer who's decided to take a chance at online publishing on the advice of a friend in the publishing business. You end up nearly falling into a river early on a rainy Saturday morning wearing a wool cloak and trying to hold up a sword that was designed for a bigger person.

But the book's almost done with the editing process, and I need a cover image, and my friend Mika's letting me use her copy of Photoshop to mess around with a photo once we've got one. I have this image in my head, and I'm hoping we can get close to it. Next time, though, I'm insisting on the trail with lots of trees instead of the bit by the water. More stable, and closer to my mental picture.

The book's called Comrades We, and it topples into the high fantasy genre. What happens when you put a group of trainees with an interesting mix of talents together and then add a few high-stress situations? This book's got magic, villains, musicians, some meddling gods, a few games of Go, a couple mysterious pasts, and a legend come to life, together with half a dozen young people trying to figure out how to react to it all. More information to come, including when I'll have the blasted thing up on Amazon and Smashwords.